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COMMISSION INTERNATIONALE DES GRANDS BARRAGES ------- VINGT-SIXIÈME CONGRÈS DES GRANDS BARRAGES Autriche, juillet 2018 ------- NUMERICAL METHODS APPLIED AND INTERPRETED FOR SAFE DAM BEHAVIOUR Gerald ZENZ1, Edwin STAUDACHER, Shervin SHAHRIARI 1Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, GRAZ UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AUSTRIA 1. INTRODUCTION Dams are designed to serve in a secure and safe way to our society under any environmental and operational conditions throughout their lifetime. During design and construction models are needed to be set up to account for the safety approach. This models are based on practical experience gained from the performance of existing structures and rely on models we assume for possible failure modes. To set up and apply advanced numerical models and interpret their results a detailed discussion within the engineering community is need. To show the abilities and the meaningful interpretation of numerical investigations the “Technical Committee on Numerical Analysis and Design of Dams” organizes since 1991 benchmark workshops. These results are published in proceedings and concluded in ICOLD Bulletins. Herein a short summary of the content of investigations and a further step to disseminate the results is undertaken. It is to emphasize the requirement to develop a model about the system behavior of dams based on their foundation, reservoir slopes, catchment area and environment. Numerical models and the interpretation of the gained results are one essential part within this ICOLD network to guarantee for the safe dam operation. International Benchmark Workshops on Numerical Analysis of Dams are intended to provide an in-depth examination of the computational methods and software used for dam analysis. It is an international forum to share the latest 5